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I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.

Donald Knuth

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Donald Knuth
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: January 10
Academic
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Historian Of Mathematics
Mathematician
Programmer
University Teacher
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Donald E. Knuth
Don Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth
D.E.K.
DEK
Knuth
Order
Fonts
Menu
Menus
Restaurant
Restaurants
Food
Looking
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More quotes by Donald Knuth

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In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TEX project is that software is hard. It's harder than anything else I've ever had to do.
Donald Knuth
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Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
Donald Knuth
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By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method it is much closer to reality.
Donald Knuth
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I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
Donald Knuth
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A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
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I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.
Donald Knuth
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People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini stones.
Donald Knuth
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AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'-that, somehow, is much harder.
Donald Knuth
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It is much more rewarding to do more with less.
Donald Knuth
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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
Donald Knuth
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People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.
Donald Knuth
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The best practice is inspired by theory.
Donald Knuth
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Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random
Donald Knuth
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I think people who write programs do have at least a glimmer of extra insight into the nature of God... because creating a program often means that you have to create a small universe
Donald Knuth
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Meta-design is much more difficult than design it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
Donald Knuth
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The manuals we got from IBM would show examples of programs and I knew I could do a heck of a lot better than that. So I thought I might have some talent.
Donald Knuth
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The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
Donald Knuth
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We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Donald Knuth
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My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.
Donald Knuth
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Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.
Donald Knuth